Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a lubricant applicator, a cleaning device, and an image forming apparatus.
Description of the Related Art
An image forming apparatus develops an electrostatic latent image as a toner image by attaching toner (developer) to an image bearing member on which an electrostatic latent image is formed. The toner image is transferred to a recording medium, and fixed to the recording medium by being heated and pressed by a fixing roller. A part of the toner remains on a surface of the image bearing member. The remaining toner forms image noise such as a black point, a stripe, etc., and decreases image quality. Thus, the image forming apparatus includes a cleaning device that removes the remaining toner from the image bearing member using a cleaning blade.
The cleaning device includes a lubricant applicator that applies lubricant to the surface of the image bearing member to decrease a frictional force between the image bearing member and the cleaning blade, thereby protecting the surface of the image bearing member and stabilizing cleaning performance.
The lubricant applicator includes a brush roller that applies a scraped lubricant to the surface of the image bearing member. The brush roller is contaminated with a remaining lubricant, toner shifted from the image bearing member, etc. over time. As a result, the amount of lubricant scraped off by the brush roller and the amount of lubricant applied to the image bearing member are affected, and uniform application of the lubricant is difficult. For this reason, technologies have been proposed to bring a flicker member into contact with the brush roller to flick (flick and separate) contaminating particles of lubricant, toner, etc. (for example, see JP 2015-106004 A, JP 2011-170155 A, and JP 2010-133997 A).
However, when a brush bristle implanted in the brush roller falls out while rubbing and scraping the flicker member, there is a problem in that some separated contaminating particles (lubricant, toner, an external additive thereof) are reattached to the brush bristle. For this reason, separation performance for the contaminating particles is insufficient, and the contaminating particles affect the amount of lubricant scraped off by the brush roller and the amount of lubricant applied to the image bearing member. Thus, there is a problem in that uniformity in lubricant application is limited. In addition, in this way, there occurs a problem of difficulty in exhibiting stable cleaning performance by the cleaning device and excellent image quality by the image forming apparatus.